You know what they say:
always make sure you have it +writing+. That way the bastards can't screw
you.
Which is one of the reasons why a prejudice against the written is being
insidously encouraged in our culture. I like the visual arts, I like music,
but any honest look at the way things are must admit that they are far more
about making money than poetry, let's be frank, the main aim of most visual
art is to produce expensive and unique commodities for the wealthy (and I
+know+ there are many exceptions to that.) In music, particularly in respect
of popular culture, one talks of the 'music industry'; transplanting that
phrase to poetry would be enough to elicit howls of laughter.
It isn't that poetry is more virtuous than other arts, it's more unwanted
commercially, but its hidden power is known and avoided in conversation: one
of the most intriguing things over here after the death of Ted Hughes was
that Blair took an 'active interest' in the question of his successor.
We are bombarded with image, with music (of sorts) but to get to grips with
the power structures of any society you have to look at words, that's where
The Law sits.
The crippling incubus on British poetry seems to be a kind of time-frozen
representationalism that, if you are not careful, will nab you back into the
verbal constructs of the 1950's or cod-Victorianism (restoring Victorian
values, recall was one of Mrs Thatcher's catchphrasings) while US poetry
falls into a kind of verbalism (which thereby confirms itself in
socio-political irrelevance)
As for Mr Long, I know nothing about his work, how could I?, it is
privileged by its occasions and I ain't been there. I do suspect though the
ability to walk and mudpaint aren't enough to make me want to cadge a fare
to the US to see ....
It's an interesting thought that
performance/conceptual/landscape/installation art are entirely dependent on
WORDS to have significance ascribed.
Best
Dave
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